I have the rather unusual advantage of having the unrevised Official Report to help me in dealing with a few points that were raised on the Fisheries Vote. First of all, in Deputy Dillon's speech, he found fault with the German Agreement because it was not, as he thought, sufficiently favourable to this country. I think, however, that he has been very unfair to that trade agreement. In fact, he has not been accurate in his description in many points. For instance, he says that we are dealing out butter to Germany at from 4d. to 5d. a lb. cheaper than our own people can buy it. That is certainly not true, nor anything like true. He also says that we are sending cattle to Germany at 27/- a cwt., while they are making 40/- on the Dublin market. That is not true. The cattle that we are sending to Germany are making more than 27/- a cwt., but it must be remembered that we get that price spread over a long period, whereas the price of cattle on the Dublin market has only been above that for a short period. Naturally, if the price here were over a long period in the same way, we would look for a revision of the treaty in that respect, and I have no doubt we would get it.
Deputy Dillon also says that we are sending eggs to Germany which we do not want to send and for which we could get a more profitable market elsewhere. That also is not true. We got the same price in Germany for our eggs in the year as we would get in Britain if we had to pay no duty in the British market. We are not prepared, either, to take considerable quantities of merchandise in exchange. The agreement is that we take whatever we like from Germany, and whatever we buy, whether it is merchandise or commodities of any description, the total value of that is taken, and for every £3 worth that we take from Germany they must take £2 worth of specified articles from us. That is really the reverse of what Deputy Dillon says is true. We send Germany a specified amount of cattle, eggs, butter and herrings—things of which we have a large surplus—and Germany is only permitted to take 15 per cent. of her purchases of the things she would like to purchase from us and which she has always been in the habit of purchasing from us—things such as wool and hides. I might say that, as a result of the treaty, Germany purchased £1,000,000 worth of goods from us last year as compared with £135,000 worth in the average year before the treaty was made.
With regard to the herrings, I admit that Germany is our principal market, and we succeeded, in our last treaty, in getting Germany to take a certain amount of herrings from us. Deputy Dillon and Deputy McMenamin would give one the impression that we have tons and tons of herrings here for which there is no market. I do not believe that is true. Our quota may be too small, but from our experience of the last few years, I think it is quite possible that we will not have more herrings than would be sufficient to fill the quota going into Germany; and really our big trouble will be to get a larger quota, or to get even the same quota, next year, if we do not fill it this year. The point is that, by asking for too much in some of these cases, we might do ourselves much more harm than by asking for the amount we think might be required.
Another matter that was raised by Deputy Dillon, and by Deputy McMenamin especially, was the question of the Foyle, and I should like to say what is the real position in regard to that matter. First of all, I would refer Deputies to an answer that was given by the Minister for External Affairs on the 12th August, 1936. I should like to read that answer because it deals with the position with regard to Lough Foyle very fully. On that occasion, the Minister said:
"Two separate and distinct issues are involved in connection with Lough Foyle—(1) The claim of the lessees of the Irish Society to a several fishery in Lough Foyle, and (2) the question of jurisdiction over the waters of the lough. In the year 1932 the Government of Saorstát Eireann put forward a proposal for a temporary administrative arrangement pending the settlement of the fishery dispute and without prejudice to the wider question of the jurisdiction of Saorstát Eireann over the waters of the lough. The British Government made it a condition precedent to any administrative arrangement that the Government of Saorstát Eireann should agree to submit the legal issues involved in the question of the boundary between Saorstát Eireann and the United Kingdom in the Lough Foyle area to a British Commonwealth tribunal. The Government of Saorstát Eireann declined to submit any such issue to a British Commonwealth tribunal.
"Correspondence between the two Governments continued during the years 1933 and 1934. In the year 1933 I again put forward the proposal which we made in the previous year. The British Government replied by placing a new difficulty in the way. They could not regard as acceptable any proposal for temporary administrative measures except on the basis of the de facto recognition of the claim of the Irish Society and its lessees to the several fishery during the currency of these measures. The Government of Saorstát Eireann declined to enter into any agreement purporting to deprive any member of the public of his right to challenge the claim of the Irish Society or their lessees in the courts of Saorstát Eireann.”
Deputy Dillon, in his criticism of the way in which this Government had dealt with Lough Foyle, made the allegation that our predecessors in office had almost settled this question of Lough Foyle when we took over the reins of government, and that we made a mess of the whole thing, in the words of Deputy Dillon. Again nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, the Minister for External Affairs, in 1932, in his reply, also says that he would not agree to submitting this issue to a British Commonwealth tribunal, exactly the same attitude that was taken up by his predecessor, Deputy McGilligan, when he was in office. The same proposal was put up in 1931 and he gave the same reply—that he was not prepared to submit this issue to a British Commonwealth tribunal. I think that Deputy Dillon, who has made the allegation several times in the last three or four years in this House, that the last Government were near a solution of this question, and that we made a mess of it, ought to accept the facts and recognise that there is no truth whatsoever in those allegations.
Another matter raised by Deputy Dillon was the question of the Erne fisheries. Everybody remembers that the late proprietors of the Erne fisheries were declared by the Supreme Court here to have no proper title to these fisheries. Afterwards the case went to the British House of Lords, where the case was decided against them, and the fisheries are now a public fishery, not a State fishery, as stated by Deputy Dillon. They are, therefore, not an asset to the Government, but they may be an asset to the public. At any rate, they are a public fishery and not a State fishery. Deputy Dillon says that in justice these people ought to be compensated. I am not going into that case now because it will naturally come up, if Deputy Dillon wishes to raise it again, when the legislation dealing with the ownership of fisheries is introduced later on in this House. I cannot certainly accept the plea that he makes, and that is that the decision in that case was based on the evidence of historians who he says subsequently came before the same court and said that "as their knowledge progresses, their opinions materially alter." I think that is a very serious thing to say about people who were called in as historical experts on the occasion of the Erne case, to cast a slur of that kind upon the value of their evidence —that, in other words, they had not read their history, or thought about it sufficiently at the time they gave evidence in the Erne case, and that if they had been more proficient or had gone further into the matter they would have given different evidence and, therefore, that there would have been a different result. As I say on that plea, I think that there is no reason whatever to give any reconsideration to this case.
Another point raised by Deputy Dillon was that we ought to go in for kippering of herrings in Donegal. He made the extraordinary statement that it would employ more than all the silk factories that could be built there. I do not know how Deputy Dillon, or even a less responsible Deputy, could make the suggestion that the kippering of herrings in Donegal would give any sort of big employment. We use a certain amount of kippered herrings in this country. They are kippered within the country and employment is being given in that way, but I am sure there is hardly a Deputy in this House could point out to any large factory that is engaged in the industry. In fact the employment that is given in that industry is not very big. There are a few scattered people here and there engaged in it but it does not amount to very much. To say that it would give more employment in Donegal if it were developed than silk factories or other factories of that type that could be established, is going a bit too far in exaggeration.
With regard to mussels, and the case made by Deputy J.P. Kelly, I made a statement when introducing this Vote that we were anxious to have some guarantee that the medical officers in centres in England would accept the certificate of the Sea Fisheries Association before we would embark on this expenditure. I do not see why that should be taken up by some Opposition Deputies as implying that we wanted the medical officers of health in England to guarantee now that in a year two, or for all time to come, if the Sea Fisheries Association said: "These mussels are all right" they would have no right to question that certificate. That is a very different thing from what we had in mind. What we had in mind was that they would be prepared to accept mussels from outside sources, provided they were properly certified and provided also that we were satisfied that they would be so satisfied before embarking on this expenditure. What we were really afraid of was that they might say that they would allow no mussels in unless they were purified under their control. That is a very different thing from looking for a carte blanche certificate before a mussel tank is built. However, I think that question of a mussel tank is not as black as it might appear to some Deputies and that there is a fair hope of making some progress in the matter in the near future.
Deputy Fionán Lynch congratulated me on having muzzled—not musseled— Deputies on this side so successfully and he quoted speeches that were made while we were in opposition by various Deputies of this Party, attacking him in the administration of the fisheries. All I can say is that it is a pity that we have not as good an Opposition now because these speeches bring us back to the old days when we had an effective Opposition and when there was a bit of life in the proceedings here. Deputy Lynch also raised a question with regard to a bounty for mackerel. That is a question that has been recently under consideration in response to an application and I think the Deputy may take it that a decision on the matter will not be delayed longer than is necessary or will not be delayed so as to cause inconvenience to those who are going to engage in that trade.
Deputy O'Neill believes that it would be an easy matter for the Government here to arrange for an international agreement for an extension of the territorial limits, that we should have an extension from 3 miles to a much wider area, and that, seeing that the nations concerned had succeeded in getting an agreement on the question of immature fish and had signed a convention in London lately on the size of nets that should be used by all concerned, it should be quite easy also to get an agreement on the territorial waters question. I need hardly say that a Government situated in a country like this would naturally be inclined to favour the greatest possible extension of territorial waters seeing that we want to preserve, as far as possible, our own territorial waters for our own fishermen, and that we are not a bit interested in going across to other countries to fish in their territorial waters. It may, therefore, be taken for granted that we shall do our best in that matter, but the trouble is to get other countries to agree.
Attention was drawn to the point that we had reduced some of the sub-heads under the Sea Fisheries Association. I explained, when introducing the Vote, that we had put down there round figures, without attempting to estimate closely, because, as I explained, we were at the moment engaged in an investigation of the affairs of that society, and we were not sure that, as a result of that investigation, we might not possibly have to make some changes—whether in the way of giving them more money or less money I cannot say. That is why those round sums were put down under the various sub-heads of the Sea Fisheries Association.
Deputy McMenamin asked a good many questions about the fisheries position here. He made a number of assertions, two of which, standing side by side, did not appear to me to be altogether consistent. He said that, with international quotas everywhere, fish cannot be sold except within the shores of the country in which they are landed. I more or less agree with that. I think that, with those international quotas, restrictions on the import of fish, and the various other restrictions like the restrictions of the Herring Board, and so on, it is becoming increasingly difficult to market fish except within the shores of the country in which they are landed.
